Black Oak Books in Berkeley to close its doors

Black Oak Books has been in West Berkeley since 2009. (Photo by John McMurtrie, 2013)

Black Oak Books, the large independent store — once a fixture in North Berkeley’s Gourmet Ghetto and now in West Berkeley — will close its doors at the end of the month. It has been in business for 33 years.

“It’s sad,” said owner Gary Cornell by phone, “but at some point you have to realize that it’s just not going to work.”

The 6,000-square-foot store at 2618 San Pablo Ave. has been in West Berkeley since 2009, when a rent increase forced it out of its old neighborhood. Books Inc. moved into the vacant North Berkeley space last June.

Two other stores closed in Berkeley last year: the 1-year-old Bookish and the 51-year-old Shakespeare & Co.

Cornell said he had hoped his new neighborhood, with help from Berkeley Bowl West and other new businesses, would grow into a thriving, hip destination, not unlike Oakland’s Temescal neighborhood. But the foot traffic didn’t increase, he said, and the neighborhood plateaued.

As good a year as 2015 was for independent booksellers, Cornell said his store’s business grew by only 1 percent. “Basically, it has always has been a marginal business,” he said.

Cornell added that turning a profit would be even tougher with Berkeley’s recent minimum wage increase, to $11 an hour. Black Oak Books has four full-time-equivalent employees.

“It means my expenses would go up 50 percent over the next five years, and to be honest, that just wasn’t in the cards,” he said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Cornell added. “I’m not against the increase in the minimum wage, but people have to be aware that it’ll probably change the mix of stores that you’re going to get. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

In conversation, Cornell was sanguine about the store’s closing. “I tried, but enough is enough,” he said with a chuckle. Cornell, 62, bought the store in 2008 — he had fond memories of visiting its original location while on two sabbaticals as a math professor at the University of Connecticut — but he said he hasn’t been as involved in the store’s day-to-day business. The bookseller is a mathematician “in my other life,” he said, adding that he was attending a math conference in Seattle.

Cornell said he might reopen the store “if another building opens up,” but for now he plans to continue selling books online. As for the tens of thousands of books, new and used, that are in the store, they are now on sale at 40 percent off.

John McMurtrie is the book editor of The San Francisco Chronicle. Twitter: @McMurtrieSF